Crete 2018 – last day in Heraklion

On Saturday I spent a final day in Heraklion. I went out early in the morning (well, ok, “early-ish”) to re-take some shots of places that I’d taken a couple of days earlier and wanted to repeat, and that hour or so went well. I still hadn’t visited the Archeological Museum so that was on my list of things to do, as was just exploring the city – and putting together in my head the various places I’d strolled through so that I had a better map of it.

First target was the Venetian Loggia, and I think I got better shots of it today. I also learned its secret – it’s not, in fact, Venetian at all; it’s a (very) faithful reconstruction of the original Loggia. Apparently, the original (which was first built in the early 17th century) was damaged a number times over the following centuries, by earthquake, fire and battle. The Ottomans re-purposed it, of course, but with Cretan independence in 1898 proposals began to be made to restore it. However, nothing came to fruition – indeed, exactly the opposite, as the first floor was demolished around the time of the first world war, and then the remaining ground floor was similarly demolished. Nonetheless it was “restored” following the second world war, though I’m not clear on how much was restoration and how much was reconstruction. Nevertheless it’s a beautiful building and worth photographic attention. If I’d been keener I’d have gone out even earlier, but I’m on holiday after all.

The Morosini fountain

Sculpture in the heart of the Loggia

A corner of the Loggia

After finishing that I had a rest back at the hotel, enjoying the air-conditioning. Then it was back out again, to look at the Koules fortress at the harbour. This dates mainly from the period immediately before, and during, the Ottoman siege of Heraklion which lasted from 1648 to 1669. (There was a bastion here from the 8th or 10th centuries, which was frequently updated over the centuries.) I had visited it last year but only had my iPhone with me that day and not my camera. It’s an impressive structure – massive, with walls that are metres thick. Most of the are covered by the fortress’s ground plan is solid material; the open chambers inside feel more as if they are spaces that have been tunnelled into rock rather than rooms with walls round them. Above these chambers is an open terrace on which more guns were situated.

The fortress terrace

Inside one of the chambers of the fortress

View from outside the fortress

The seaward side of the fortress

But it was all in vain; in the end the defence failed. After 21 years of siege of the city there was a negotiated surrender and the Venetian commander and a lot of Venetian occupants were allowed to sail away, and the Ottomans marched in. They stayed for almost 250 years.

A bit of history: Crete is a much-occupied land, and Heraklion a much-occupied city. If we assume that the Greeks are the native population then the eastern Roman empire and its successor, the Byzantine empire, should be regarded as ‘native rule’. But the Arabs conquered and occupied Crete between the mid 9th cent and the late 10th (and made Heraklion their capital), the Venetians arrived in the early 13th cent and stayed until 1669 (although I gather that by the end of that period they had started to go native; there was a definite Veneto-greek upper class), the Ottoman Turks arrived in 1669 and stayed until 1898, bringing Islam with them. Then after a period of Greek rule the Germans conquered the island in 1941 and stayed until 1945.

When I left the fortress I went for some lunch and afterwards was surprised to find that it was beginning to rain. I returned to the hotel during the heat of the afternoon (or so I thought), intending to go out at about 4 o’clock to the archeological museum, but when I came to do that I discovered it was raining stair-rods. I waited for about an hour for it to stop, but eventually gave up waiting, went out, and promptly got very wet. Fortunately I had a stroke of luck – a street trader selling umbrellas turned up, and I bought one for a princely €5. It’s not the best umbrella the world has ever seen, but it survived the afternoon so that was €5 well spent.

So I was able to get to the Archeological Museum in the end. It’s hard to describe this – one the one hand its a museum and after a while your eyes start to glaze over looking at all the displays (it’s a fairly traditional museum – glass cases, etc.) On the other hand, you have to keep pinching yourself to keep remembering that this stuff is between 3,000 and 5,000 years old – and it’s beautiful and professionally-made. There’s lots of pottery, and most of it is high-quality. I remember seeing cups that are nearly 4,000 years – even that long ago, they knew how make a drinking vessel that you could put hot liquid in and then raise to your lips without burning your hands. And there were ‘tea-pots’; not actually tea-pots, of course, because there’s no evidence that tea ever made its way to Crete that long ago, but that’s exactly what they look like. What did they drink out of them? Was it, like tea-drinking in the 18th century, a social and status-establish activity? We don’t know, and I don’t suppose we ever will. But what came across was that these were people not too dissimilar from us. At the very least, they liked having and using beautiful things.

Another thing that became clear was that after the palaces finally fell, in the 12th or 13th century BCE, standards of living collapsed. Indeed, there’s not much for the next several centuries, and when remains reappear in the 9th cent BCE, the quality is well below that of the Minoan period.

What I’d love to know is: how did Minoan civilisation happen? Why there? What factors brought it about, raised it above almost every other society on earth at that time? Again, we don’y know. But I’d love to find out more.